HARVEY WASHINGTON WILEY
WILEY, HARVEY WASHINGTON, has been chief of the bureau of chemistry in the United States department of agriculture since 1883. He brought to that position natural endowments and most thorough training. During the twenty years in which he has been the organizing and systematizing head of this work, the advance in the science of agriculture and in the profits of farming has been most rapid and comprehensive. The department has expanded, to cover the needs of our country. The population at large, as well as the farmers whom it more directly affects, have reaped the rewards financially of the unwearied investigations and experiments of the department. The problem of returning to the soil in proper form that which is taken from it in production, involves economical as well as chemical factors. The introduction of the three essentials of plant growth, potash, nitrogen and phosphoric acid, into soils long cultivated, like the whole subject of fertilizers, requires much study. The variety of the productions of the United States may be judged of by the fact that of wheat alone more than seven hundred varieties were sent to the Paris exposition from the United States. During the last few years Doctor Wiley has carried on experiments in regard to food preserved by chemical means. A number of people have been induced to allow themselves to be experimented upon by this artificially preserved food, and the effect of possibly injurious preservatives will be effectually tested. The whole matter of pure or adulterated food for our people is involved in the results of these experiments and the legislation which will result from them.
To Doctor Wiley's exertions and labors are due in no small part this vast enlargement of the department of agricultural chemistry. Beside this work he has been professor of agricultural chemistry in the graduate school of Columbian university since 1895, and was president of the American Chemical Society for two terms from 1893 to 1895. In the year 1900 he was appointed a member of the jury of awards of the Paris exposition; and he was a delegate from the
